


Just a Momentary Thing

by shykia1029



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27126028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shykia1029/pseuds/shykia1029
Summary: "As Sebastien first leans in to kiss him, David suddenly thinks, wildly, of Patrick."
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Sebastien Raine/David Rose
Comments: 13
Kudos: 168





	1. David

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Momentary Thing by Something Happens because I can only title things with song lyrics.

As Sebastien first leans in to kiss him, David suddenly thinks, wildly, of Patrick. 

He doesn’t want to. Kind, cute, pure, almost certainly straight Patrick doesn’t belong here. Doesn’t belong in this motel room with him and his monster of an ex and a memory card waiting to be stolen. Patrick belongs in a clean house with a wife and two, maybe three kids, probably a dog because Patrick is allergic to cats.

Sebastien bites David’s lower lip, hard, and David remembers to respond. He needs to perform. He’s used to performing. He’s good at it. 

Patrick isn’t a performer. Not in this sense, anyway; he starred in musicals all through high school. But he’s not a _liar_. He’s witty and he teases but he’s never lying, never manipulating. David wonders if Sebastien could get Patrick into bed. He probably could, regardless of Patrick’s actual preferences. He’s a manipulative bastard, and he’s really good at being a manipulative bastard. 

David knows he’s a manipulative bastard, too. He's being a manipulative bastard right now, even if Sebastien deserves it. 

Before he can stop himself, he wonders whether he could successfully manipulate Patrick into bed, regardless of his actual preferences, and wants to throw up. 

Sebastien pulls David’s jacket down his arms and drops it to the floor. Sebastien doesn’t know how to take care of nice things. He buys expensive sweaters with other people’s credit cards and lets them fall to shit on purpose. 

_There’s beauty in destruction_ , Sebastien used to say. 

Two days ago, David had dropped a bottle of body milk, one of the big ones, and it had shattered. Patrick had walked in on David frantically trying to clean up the mess. He hadn’t even realized he’d cut himself on a shard of glass until Patrick’s sharp inhale and _Jesus, David, stop it_ at the sight of the soft pink hue spreading through the puddle of white moisturizer. 

He’d taken David’s hand in his own and helped him up and guided him into the bathroom to rinse it off and worried that it might need stitches. He’d cleaned up the rest of the mess alone without hurting himself and hadn’t yelled at David for the loss of the product even though the biggest bottle of body milk was really, really expensive. 

David suddenly realizes that Sebastien is guiding him towards the bed. He supposes he’s been participating on autopilot this whole time, like when you’re driving home and let your mind wander and suddenly find yourself in your driveway with no idea how you got there. 

It’s happened before, during sex. He’s checked out for what felt like one second then suddenly he’s naked on his hands and knees and has no idea how he got there, even though he knows he did so willingly, probably enthusiastically. 

That usually happens when he’s indulged a little too much in that night’s chemical high of choice. Right now, he’s sober except for the single vodka soda Sebastien had poured him. He hasn’t had anything stronger than weed since he moved here.

He thinks Patrick has probably smoked weed at least once. He’s pretty sure small-town kids do that; they smoke terrible cheap weed and drink terrible cheap beer at house parties and bonfires. Patrick probably drank cheap beer then grew up a little and discovered those stupid microbrews he drinks and never smoked anything after he finished college. 

Sebastien isn’t wasting any time; he’s pulled out lube and a condom and David wonders if he packed them in his overnight bag because he knew this was going to happen. 

Patrick is probably home right now. Maybe working on spreadsheets, something for the store David doesn’t understand. Maybe reading, Patrick likes to read, or watching a movie. David wonders what kinds of movies Patrick likes. He never understands David’s romcom references.

It isn’t careful and it isn’t gentle but that’s good because he wants this done quickly, wants to finish this because Sebastien tends to just pass out after coming whether he’s finished the other person off or not and that’s what David needs, for Sebastien to pass out so he can just get what he came for. 

It is over quickly. David just then realizes that he’s lucky Sebastien wore a condom of his own prerogative because he usually didn’t want to and all of David’s attempts to argue about it always ruined the mood. Maybe he thinks David is diseased. Maybe he thinks this town is diseased and he’ll catch it from David. 

David thinks that Patrick probably lost his virginity at a nice hotel on prom night and brought condoms even though his date who was probably also his girlfriend was on the pill because he wanted to be smart and responsible for her. 

Sebastien has pulled the motel sheets up over his hips and mumbles something into his pillow. He used to do that and David would lay there in the dark and listen intently and try to figure out what he was saying. He never could. 

It isn’t exactly a heist. The camera is right there. David pops out the memory card and drops it into the remnants of his vodka soda. He watches bubbles flying to stick to it then fizzing out. After a minute, he pulls it out, puts on one of his high tops, and crushes it under his heel. 

He showers and pulls on his t-shirt and briefs and can’t bear to go back to his room and see Alexis right now. On the bed, next to a sleeping Sebastien, he stares at a troubling stain on the ceiling and thinks about seeing Patrick tomorrow and wonders if Patrick will be able to tell. Patrick would think what he just did was disgusting. He wouldn’t call David a slut, he’s too nice for that. But the word would be there, nagging at the back of his mind. He’d realize exactly what kind of person he was getting into business with and try to figure out how he could back out and get his old job back. He’d never talk to David again and the store would wither and die. 

David stares up at the stain on the ceiling. He could swear that it’s getting bigger right in front of his eyes.


	2. Patrick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2: Patrick's POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided this fic I wrote took place at the same time as Chapter 1 and put them together.

It’s quiet at Ray’s. Too quiet. 

Not during the day, of course. But at night, when all the clients leave and Ray finally goes to sleep after enthusiastically recapping the day to Patrick as if they didn’t spend most of it working together, it falls silent. Patrick can appreciate silence when he needs it to think, but right now he’s trying really hard not to think, so the silence is a real problem. 

He thinks of dark, sharp eyes and a quick wit and an inventive mind. He thinks about a life story obviously far more interesting than his own if the tiny snippets he’s heard from it are anything to go on. He wants more than tiny snippets. He wants to know every single thing David has ever done. He wants to know what he likes and dislikes and what makes him smile and what Patrick can do to make him smile, because every time he does Patrick feels full and bright and amazing because he can make David Rose smile. 

David doesn’t like to smile. He tries not to and he probably thinks Patrick doesn’t see when he starts to for just a moment before schooling his expression back to neutrality or vague irritation. 

Patrick has never known anyone who actively tried not to smile. He wants desperately to know why. He wants to know why David wears black and white pretty much exclusively like someone trying to blend in when he’s very obviously not trying to blend in. He wants to know if that skin regimen he talks about makes his skin as soft as it looks. 

And that’s a really weird thing to wonder about your business partner, so Patrick stops wondering it.

He thinks Alexis might have been flirting with him the day he went to drop off David’s business license, but he isn’t sure. He’s never been good at telling when girls have been flirting with him.

Junior year of high school he’d asked his friend Greg if he thought their friend Rachel had been acting different lately and Greg had looked at Patrick with a kind of horrified pity. 

_Yeah,_ Greg had said. _She’s been hitting on you for months now and you still haven’t done anything about it so she’s upping her game._

_She has?_ Patrick had asked bewilderedly. _What do I do?_

Greg had actually laughed, albeit good-naturedly, and said, _You ask her out. Moron._

_Jerk,_ Patrick had retorted, because he was also really bad at cursing, and after school that day he’d asked Rachel if she wanted to go see a movie with him that weekend because that’s what Greg said he should do.

He’d spent months after that learning how to be a boyfriend, because that was what Patrick did. He decided to do something and he took charge and applied himself and worked until he did it right. 

Being a boyfriend meant telling your girlfriend she was beautiful, and introducing her to your family, and not looking at any other girls. All those things had been pretty easy. 

It also meant kissing her and touching her and renting a room on Prom Night to lose your mutual virginities. Those things were harder. Those things made him so anxious that it tied his stomach in knots just to think about them and all he could do was hope his friends felt the same way about their girlfriends but kept it a secret too. 

He wonders if he’s supposed to date Alexis. He should want to. She’s beautiful and charming even when she’s ordering him to carry boxes around. He really should want to. 

He doesn’t. 

Then again, he should have wanted to marry Rachel. She was sweet and pretty. She was far too nice about him wavering between being together and not. Their families were close. He really did love her in a way that should have been enough to make him happy. 

It wasn’t. 

He’d thought telling Rachel that he couldn’t marry her, and yes, he’d said that before but this was the last time, he really meant it and he couldn’t keep dragging her along like this, would be the hardest thing he’d ever have to do. 

It wasn’t. It turned out the hardest thing Patrick would ever have to do was tell his mother that he’d told Rachel that, sit at her kitchen table and refuse to argue with her about it no matter how hard she tried to make him, then drop the bomb that he wasn’t coming back to stay in his childhood bedroom for a little while this time, when he moved out of Rachel’s apartment he was going somewhere else. 

_Where?_ she’d asked in disbelief. _Where are you going?_

_I…_ Patrick actually hadn’t thought that far. _I don’t know yet._

Patrick loved his mother. The look on her face alone when he’d said that had almost been enough to make him completely undo everything he’d just done, promise to stay forever, beg Rachel to take him back again, anything his mother wanted if she would just stop looking at him like that.

He hadn’t done it. He’d hugged her and his father and apologized again and promised to call them often at least to let them know he was still okay. 

He wonders what David is doing. He wishes he could be talking to David right now. It wouldn’t even matter what they were talking about. 

Maybe he can do that thing Rachel does when she wants to get back together, send a little nonsense text and call it an accident. She always knew right when to do it, when it had been just long enough that her name lighting up on his phone’s screen would actually be a relief in a way because it was so much easier to just be doing what he was supposed to and it was so hard fighting to do what he wasn’t and he was just so tired. 

Then they’d be back together and his parents would be so happy and everything would be so much better for a while until a friend mentioned the honeymoon or how many kids they would have and his stomach would drop and he’d be tired all over again, craving the relief he would feel upon calling off the wedding again. 

It was messed up. Really messed up. 

Patrick thinks the morning he woke up with a clear head and a plan to propose a business partnership was the first time he’s felt well-rested in years. 

He doesn’t want to play that game with David and he really doesn’t want to think about why he’s tempted to do with David something that’s always been done in the name of romance before. 

Maybe he can text David something business related. Tell him he’d started working on the grants, or that he’d given Ray his two weeks’ notice. 

Patrick has a sudden mental image of David at some expensive, classy bar, talking flirtatiously with some tall, attractive stranger of a man, then feeling his phone buzz and picking it up just briefly enough to see that it was Patrick who texted him before putting it down again, text unread.

Which is completely ridiculous. Schitt’s Creek doesn’t have a bar like that. Even Elmdale doesn’t have a bar like that. Patrick doesn’t even know for sure that David is… that he’s into guys. Then again, women can be tall and attractive strangers too. 

Maybe he just needs more time with Alexis. She really was beautiful. Maybe before, when he’d tried to date other girls between engagements, he’d just still felt too attached to Rachel. Maybe that wouldn’t happen if he spent more time with Alexis now. 

He wonders if she’ll be at the store when he goes by tomorrow and hopes she won’t because he desperately wants to be alone with David so he can focus on making him smile. David is beautiful when he smiles. He’s always beautiful. 

Patrick presses the heels of his palms into his closed eyes until he sees stars and tries not to groan out loud. 

He has no problem with gay people. He never has. He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with people who are gay, or bi, or whatever. But _he_ isn’t…

He can’t be, because what kind of freak gets to be thirty years old without knowing something so fundamental about themselves? 

David is really beautiful. Patrick wishes he had a picture of him. He wonders how he can get one without being incredibly creepy. Maybe suggest they take a picture together under the new store sign, or something. 

David’s Instagram, which he had found when he had Googled him, feeling guilty but rationalizing that he should find out if the man he was thinking about partnering with had any previous business experience, isn’t very helpful. He hasn’t posted much in a long time. Farther back, though, he’s in a lot of pictures with fabulous, ridiculously attractive men and women who are probably all models or celebrities Patrick’s never heard of. 

But in none of the pictures does David look like the David he knows. _His_ David, he thinks before he can stop myself. 

He’s thinner than Patrick’s David, which he will never let David know he’s noticed. He looks paler and kind of gaunt and a lot less healthy in general. He’s a little more made up. And in not one of the pictures does he look happy.  
David doesn’t smile much, but Patrick knows him, and he knows when David is happy whether he’s smiling or not. The look David is giving the camera in all his pictures isn’t his bitchy face, or his annoyed face, or even his neutral face. The look David is giving the camera is just…empty. 

Maybe he can surreptitiously take a picture the next time David is lost in his work at the store. He doesn’t smile when he organizes jars of hand cream or fusses over getting the labels on the bottles of body milk placed exactly right, but he always looks so happy. 

What an incredibly creepy and unprofessional idea. He’ll have to find another way. 

For now, all he can do is roll over and close his eyes and count the times he’s made David smile, picturing each one as he does.


End file.
